The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 Magazine search: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
 from antiquity to 2017



   “A Relic of the Pliocene”
aka "Angry Mammoth"
by Jack London
First publication: Collier’s, 12 Jan 1901
Reprinted in: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1959

Neither our narrator Thomas Stevens nor the mighty hunter Nimrod realized that the modern-day mammoth of this story arrived in the frozen north via time travel, but why else would F&SF have reprinted the story some 42 years after London’s passing?

 I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for you are a young man and have travelled little; but, at the same time, I am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer exists. How do I know? I killed the last one with my own right arm. 

Jack London, Master Traveller

For the most part, my grandpa was enamored of Jack London’s tales of northern dogs; but Grandpa also awarded London a Master Traveller Citation for bringing time travel to the Yukon in this story.


   “Don’t Be a Goose”
aka “The Hero Equation”
by Robert Arthur, Jr.
First publication: Argosy, 3 May 1941
Reprinted in: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1959

In the third of Murchison Morks’ tall tales at the gentlemen’s club, he tells of mathematics professor Alexander Peabody who discovers an equation that, if concentrated upon firmly, projects him back into the body of a goose at the time of a Celtic attack on Rome.

 He was sure it would work. But when he confided his dreams to his sister Martha, she, woman-like, merely sniffed. She called him a goose. 


   “Friday, the Nineteenth”
by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950

Tired of his marraige, Donald Boyce begins exchanging the odd kiss and soft touch on the hand with his best friend’s wife Molly, all quite innocent until Friday, the nineteenth, when Molly proposes that they have a clandistine rendezvous on Saturday, the twentieth, throwing both of them into a continuous repeat of the nineteenth.

A well-written, early time-loop story, and also one of the first two time travel stories (along with “An Ounce of Prevention”) to appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

 “I don’t want to go either. It’s been so wonderful,” she said, “this little time alone together. I love this funny little bar; I’ve loved every moment here. I wish today would never end.” 


The story also appeared in this 1951 anthology.   “An Ounce of Prevention”
by Paul A. Carter (as by Philip Carter)
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950

By virtue of being on Mars, John Stilson is the last survivor of the human race after the ultimate war, but the Martians have a plan to change all that by sending Stilson back to alter the amount of fissionable material in Earth’s crust.

 Wherever in history a decision involving alternatives has to be made, separate and distinct futures branch off, rooted in that choice. There is a world in which the American colonies became a nation, and a world in which they remained under British rule. There is a world in which Franklin Roosevelt was four times elected President, and a world in which the assassination attempt against him in Miami was successful. There is no “might have been,” for the events that “might have been” have actually taken place, somewhere in time—not before, not after, but beside their alternatives. . . . 




   “Of Time and Third Avenue”
by Alfred Bester
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 1951

Apparently, time travel has rules. For example, you cannot go back and simply take something from the past—it must be given to you. Thus, our man from the future must talk young Oliver Wilson Knight and his girlfriend into giving up the 1990 almanac that they bought in 1950.

 If there was such a thing as a 1990 almanac, and if it was in that package, wild horses couldn’t get it away from me. 


The story was reprinted in this 1959 anthology.   “The Shape of Things That Came”
by Richard Deming
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 1951

George Blades takes a trip from 1900 to 1950 (wearing his uncle’s time-nightshirt, of course), and upon his return, he chronicles the journey in fictional form, which he submits to his unbelieving editor.

 I am concerned solely with potential reader reaction. The average reader simply won’t believe in your year 1950. 




   “The Business, As Usual”
by Mack Reynolds
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1952

A time traveler from the 20th century has only 15 minutes to negotiate a trade for an artifact to prove that he’s been to the 30th century.

 “Look, don’t you get it? I’m a time traveler. They picked me to send to the future. I’m important.”
   “Ummm. But you must realize that we have time travelers turning up continuously these days.” 


   “Hobson’s Choice”
by Alfred Bester
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1952

By night, Addyer dreams of traveling to different times; by day, he is a statistician investigating an anomalous increase in the country’s population centered right in the part of the country that took the heaviest radiation damage in the war.

 Either he imagined himself moved backward in time with a double armful of Encyclopedia Britannica, best-sellers, hit plays and gambling records; or else he imagined himself transported forward in time a thousand years to the Golden Age of perfection. 


   “Bring the Jubilee”
by Ward Moore
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1952

In a world where the South won the “War for Southron Independence,” Hodge Backmaker, a northern country bumpkin with academic leanings, makes his way to New York City where he becomes disillusioned, ponders the notions of time and free will, and eventually goes to a communal think-tank where time travel offers him the chance to visit the key Gettysburg battle of the war.

 I could say that time is an illusion and that all events occur simultaneously. 


   “The Other Inauguration”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 1953

Usually, when I start a story, I already know whether it has time travel in the plot, but occassionally I’m surprised when the temporal antics arise, as in this story of Peter Lanroyd’s attempt to change the outcome of a presidental election that’s stolen by an ideologue. (No, no—not the year 2000. This is a fictional tale.)

I first read this story during my ice-climbing trip to Ouray with Tim.

 To any man even remotely interested in politics, let alone one as involved as I am, every 1st Tue of every 4th Nov must seem like one of the crucial if-points of history. 






   “The King’s Wishes”
by Robert Sheckley
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul 1953

Bob and Janice, co-owners of the Country Department Store, are determined to catch the thief who’s sneaking in to steal appliances every night. Yes, they do capture him; yes, he’s from the past, in fact he’s a ferra (cousins of the jinni); no, I’m not going to tell you why he’s after all those generators, refrigerators, and air conditioners.

By the way, I’d love to know more about the story behind the two different versions of the Emsh cover. The top one has the old F&SF logo, last used on the Sep 1952 issue; the bottom one has the new logo from Oct 1952 forward. Does anyone know the story behind this?

 The ferra of the cup has to be skilled in all branches of demonology. I had just graduated from college—with only passing grades. But of course, I thought I could handle anything. 




   “Blood”
by Fredric Brown
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb 1955

A cute joke story about the last two vampires on Earth who flee into the future to escape persecution and simply search for a filling meal.

 I, a member of the dominant race, was once what you called . . . 




   “The Dragon”
by Ray Bradbury
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 1955

On a dark night on a moor, 900 years after the nativity, two knights face down a steaming behemoth.

 It was a fog inside of a mist inside of a darkness, and this place was no man’s place and there was no year or hour at all, but only these men in a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm, and white thunder which moved behind the great falling pane of green glass that was the lightning. 








   The Time Patrol Stories
by Poul Anderson
First story: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1955

Former military engineer Manse Everard is recruited by the Time Patrol to prevent time travelers from making major changes to history (history bounces back from the small stuff).

For me, the logic of these stories pushes in a good direction, but still leaves one gaping hole that’s evinced by the fate of Manse’s compatriot Keith Denison in “Brave to Be a King”—namely, what happened to the younger Denison? Perhaps my problem is simply that I don’t grok ℵℵ-valued logic.

The stories have been collected in various volumes, the most complete of which is the 2006 Time Patrol that contains all but The Shield of Time.
  1. Time Patrol (May 1955) F&SF
  2. Delenda Est (Dec 1955) F&SF
  3. Brave to Be a King (Aug 1959) F&SF
  4. The Only Game in Town (Jan 1960) F&SF
  5. Gibraltar Falls (Oct 1975) F&SF
  6. Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks (Oct 1983) in Time Patrolman
  7. The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (Oct 1983) in Time Patrolman
  8. Star of the Sea (Oct 1991) in The Time Patrol
  9. The Year of the Ransom (Apr 1988) about 25,000 words
  10. The Stranger That Is Within Thy Gates (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  11. Women and Horses and Power and War (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  12. Before the Gods That Made the Gods (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  13. Beringia (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  14. Riddle Me This (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  15. Amazement of the World (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
  16. Death and the Knight (Jun 1995) in Tales of the Knights Templar

 If you went back to, I would guess, 1946, and worked to prevent your parents’ marriage in 1947, you would still have existed in that year; you would not go out of existence just because you had influenced events. The same would apply even if you had only been in 1946 one microsecond before shooting the man who would otherwise have become your father. 




   “The Message”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb 1956

Time traveler and historian George tries to travel back to World War II without making any changes to the world.

 George was deliriously happy. Two years of red tape and now he was finally back in the past. Now he could complete his paper on the social life of the foot soldier of World War II with some authentic details. 




   Through Time and Space with
Ferdinand Feghoot
by Grendel Briarton (aka Reginald Bretnor)
First story: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1956

Under the anagramatic name Grendel Briarton, Reginald Bretnor began a series of pun-terminated short, short stories in the May 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, some of which included time travel. Among others, they were a hit with Asimov both imitated and republished them in “Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in the 1970s, and they also appeared in various other magazines. In fact, they were such a hit that any story-pun now goes by the generic name of a feghoot. But despite enjoying unforced puns, for me this kind of story is like a cross between that guy who built the Ark and the yellow part of a banana.

 “Marsh in flying sauce oars,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. 

—Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot LXIII




   “The Man Who Came Early”
by Poul Anderson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1956

An explosion throws Sergeant Gerald Robbins from the 1950s to about 990 AD Iceland where, dispite his advanced knowledge, he had trouble fitting in.

 Now, then. There is one point on which I must set you right. The end of the world is not coming in two years. This I know. 




   “Compounded Interest”
by Mack Reynolds
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1956

“Mr. Smith” shows up in 1300 A.D. to invest ten gold coins at 10% annual interest with Sior Marin Goldini’s firm, after which he shows up every 100 years to provide guidance.

 In one hundred years, at ten per cent compounded annually, your gold would be worth better than 700,000 zecchini. 




   The Door Into Summer
by Robert A. Heinlein
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct-Dec 1956

Inventor Dan Davis falls into bad company and wakes up 30 years later, but he gets an idea of how to put things right even at this late point.

 Denver in 1970 was a very quaint place with a fine old-fashioned flavor; I became very fond of it. It was nothing like the slick New Plan maze it had been (or would be) when I had arrived (or would arrive) there from Yuma; it still had less than two million people, there were still buses and other vehicular traffic in the streets—there were still streets; I had no trouble finding Colfax Avenue. 




   “Gimmicks Three”
aka “The Brazen Locked Room”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1956

Isidore Wellby makes a timely pact with the devil’s demon.

 Ten years of anything you want, within reason, and then you’re a demon. You’re one of us, with a new name of demonic potency, and many privileges beside. You’ll hardly know you’re damned. 




   “A Loint of Paw”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1957

Master criminal Montie Stein has found a way around the statute of limitations.

 It introduced law to the fourth dimension. 








   The Changewar Stories
by Fritz Leiber
First story: Astounding, Mar 1958

Two groups, the Snakes and the Spiders, battle each other for the control of all time. At least one other story (“When the Change-Winds Blow”) has appeared in the Change War collections with no snakes or spiders, but it may be in the Change War universe nonetheless.
  1. Try and Change the Past (Mar 1958) Astounding
  2. The Big Time (Mar and Apr 1958) Galaxy
  3. Damnation Morning (Aug 1959) Fantastic
  4. The Oldest Soldier (May 1960) F&SF
  5. No Great Magic (Dec 1963) Galaxy
  6. When the Change-Winds Blow (Aug 1964) F&SF
  7. Knight’s Move, aka Knight to Move (Dec 1965) Broadside

    These might be Changewar, but with no time travel:
  8. A Deskful of Girls (Apr 1958) F&SF
  9. The Number of the Beast (Dec 1958) Galaxy
  10. The Haunted Future, aka Tranquility, or Else! (Nov 1959)    Fantastic
  11. The Mind Spider (Nov 1959) Fantastic
  12. When the Change-Winds Blow (Aug 1964) F&SF
  13. Black Corridor (Dec 1967) Galaxy

 Change one event in the past and you get a brand new future? Erase the conquests of Alexander by nudging a Neolithic pebble? Extirpate America by pulling up a shoot of Sumerian grain? Brother, that isn’t the way it works at all! The space-time continuum’s built of stubborn stuff and change is anything but a chain-reaction. 

—“Try and Change the Past”




   “Poor Little Warrior!”
by Brian Aldiss
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1958

You are reading an artsy story, told in the second-person, about a time traveler from AD 2181 who hunts a brontosaurus.

 Time for listening to the oracle is past; you’re beyond the stage for omens, you’re now headed in for the kill, yours or his; superstition has had its little day for today; from now on, only this windy nerve of yours, thius shakey conglomeration of muscle entangled untraceably beneath the sweat-shiny carapice of skin, this bloody little urge to slay the dragon, is going to answer all your orisons. 




   “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed”
by Alfred Bester
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 1958

When Professor Henry Hassel discovers his wife in the arms of another man, he does what any mad scientist would do: build a time machine to go back and kill his wife’s grandfather. He has no trouble changing the past, but any effect on the present seems rather harder to achieve.

 “While I was backing up, I inadvertently trampled and killed a small Pleistocene insect.”
   “Aha!” said Hassel.
   “I was terrified by the indicent. I had visions of returning to my world to find it completely changed as a result of this single death. Imagine my surprise when I returned to my world to find that nothing had changed!” 




   “Wildcat”
by Poul Anderson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1958

Herries, the leader of 500 men drilling for oil in the Jurassic, wonders about free will and the eventual fate of twentieth century America and its nuclear-armed adversaries.

The story was a nice forerunner to Silverberg’s “Hawksbill Station.”

 But we are mortal men. And we have free will. The fixed-time concept need not, logically, produce fatalism; after all, Herries, man’s will is itself one of the links in teh causal chain. I suspect that this irrational fatalism is an important reason why twentieth-century civilization is approaching suicide. If we think we know our future is unchangeable, if our every action is foreordained, if we are doomed already, what’s the use of trying? Why go through all the pain of thought, of seeking an answer and struggling to make others accept it? But if we really believed in ourselves, we woiuld look for a solution, and find one. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch, F&SF, Sep 1958 [stopping time ]

The story also appeared in the Aug 1964 Venture.   “Snitkin’s Law”
by Eleazar Lipsky
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fegb 1959

Lipsky, himself a lawyer, tells the story of Lester Snitkin, an untrustworthy, small-time lawyer who is whisked into the Unimaginable Future to save mankind from the perfect justice meted out by the Justice Machine.

 According to the Theory of Improbability, all moral qualities can be suitably quantified under the so-called Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev Transformation Equations. By these fruitful formulations, it was discovered early in the twentieth century that everything can be taken to mean anything else provided that the number field be restricted to the transcendentals. 


The story also appeared in this 2003 collection.   “The Willow Tree”
by Jane Rice
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb 1959

By my count, this is the fifth time travel story in the February 1959 issue of F&SF, which is a record. Maybe they were anticipating the release of The Time Machine in the subsequent year.

In this story, four orphans are sent to live in the past with the rather odd Aunt Martha and the slightly less odd Aunt Harriet, who together give the children only one commandment: Never play under the willow tree!

 When the four O  ::  children, Lucy, Robert, Charles, and May, were orphaned by a freak of circumstances, they were sent to live in the Past with two spinster relatives, ostensibly because of crowded conditions elsewhere. 




   “—All You Zombies—”
by Robert A. Heinlein
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 1959

A 25-year-old man, originally born as an orphan girl named Jane, tells his story to a 55-year-old bartender who then recruits him for a time-travel adventure.

 When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man. 


the story also appeared in this 1961 collection   “Of Time and Cats”
by Howard Fast
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 1959

In a panic, Professor Bob Bottman calls his wife from the Waldorf where he’s hiding out from dozens of other Bob Bottmans (and possibly just as many of Professor Dunbar’s cats).

 They want to live as much as I do. I am the first me, and therefore the real me; but they are also me—different moments of consciousness in me—but they are me. 




   “Unto the Fourth Generation”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1959

During an ordinary day of business, Sam Marten is obsessivly drawn to different men named Levkowich, each with a different spelling.

When I began putting together this Big List in 2005, I started with all the Asimov time travel stories that I could remember. Somehow I forgot about this story which I first read in 1973 in Nightfall and Other Stories. But then, while scouring the 1950s back issues of F&SF for more obscure stories, there it was: Sam Marten’s great, great grandfather brought from his deathbed to meet Sam, and there, also, was a moment of time travel for Sam himself.

Two new sentences were added at the end of the original story for the reprinting in Asimov’s collection, so I thought it would be appropriate to quote those new sentences here:

 Yet somehow he knew that all would be well with him. Somehow, as never before, he knew. 


   “Lost in Translation”
by Rosel George Brown
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1959

Prudish Mercedes King, a devotee and advocate of the neo-Victorian revival as well as a true Graecophile, is approached by her father’s graduate student about participating in a certain experiment.

 Let me at least tell you what the experiment is. You can faint after I’m finished. 


The story also appeared in the Apr 1960 issue of this French story magazine.   “Tenth Time Around”
by J.T. McIntosh
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1959

Gene Player seems destined to always lose his love Belinda to his friend Harry Scott, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll get it right on the tenth time around as he’s once again sent back to his 1975 body in this branching universe time travel story. But what if in the new 1975, he meets young Doreen for the first time, not to mention those other small things that go differently?

 It was a big decision, the first time. If you were at all successful in life at forty, fifty, sixth, the glorious thought of being young again, strong, healthy and probably in love, was considerably tempered by the consideration that you’d be pushed around again, that you’d have to get up at seven and work hard all day for less than a tenth of what you made now, that you’d have to go through this or that operation again, that you’d have to see your father and mother die again  . . . 


   “Production Problem”
by Robert F. Young
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1960

Bridgemaker has never had any trouble making money, but it’s a different vocation that he longs for, a vocation that was apparently widespread in the past, so he sends men from Timesearch, Inc., to find the secret that had to exist in the past.

 Our field men have explored the Pre-Technological Age, the First Technological Age, and the early years of our own age; but even though they witnessed some of the ancient technicians at work, they never caught a glimpse of the machine. 




   “Obituary”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1959

The wife of Lancelot Stebbins (not his real name) tells of the difficulties of being married to a man who is obsessively driven to find fame as a physicist, even to the point of worrying about what his obituary will say—but perhaps time travel can put that worry to rest.

 At any rate, he turned full on me. His lean body shook and his dark eyebrows pulled down over his deep-set eyes as he shrieked at me in a falsetto, “But I’ll never read my obituary. I’ll be deprived even of that.” 




   “Welcome”
by Poul Anderson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 1960

Tom Barlow, the world’s first time traveler, receives a welcome from Earth’s rulers 500 years in the future.

Tom departed from the late twentieth century because of its unpleasant political climate, but the description of Barlow’s orginal time reads more as if Anderson got a peek at 2016 Donald Trump.

 Disgust would be the simplest word. 


   “The Zookeeper”
by Otis Kidwell Burger
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul 1961

Some 18,000 centuries in the future, one remaining being from the past looks after the animals and artifacts in the zoo where They keep Their collectables including Ruth, a reflective and naive woman of the long-lost past.

 Having conquered Time and Space, They have now returned to them, as children do to long-forgotten toys. The collectors of string, match-boxes, old bottle-caps, have finally inherited the earth, and the City, built in the first star-reaching flush of power, has now become a dusty antique shop stuffed with every period Man ever knew. People in queer costumes parade the streets; the Old Vehicles Club has outings along SP@ Ave. (and only They, who can control time and motion, could keep Anglo-Saxon carts and Hexabiles from the 4th archy going at the same pace.) 


   “The Kappa Nu Nexus”
by Avram Davidson and Morton Klass
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1961

Spending a night at the Kappa Nu fraternity, potential freshman pledge Hank Gordon is the recipient of visits from Thaïs, Cleopatra, Nell Gwynn, and other ladies on their way from the past to their future patrons.

 Upon the bit of flimsy fabric which emphasized, rather than concealed, her bosom, was a large name-pin reading Cleopatra. This she removed, the action revealing to astonished Hank two small but distinct areas on which he had never till this moment realized that rouge might be applied. 


   “Green Sunrise”
by Doris Pitkin Buck, circa 1920
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1961

Alfred loves his time machine more than his wife, but when she pushes him into it and he meets Zopheeta and others from an unspecified future time, he gets almost as confused as I was while reading this story.

 Too late. Emmeline’s little pale wreath slithered down the curve of a hoop and knocked a switch and two spirals as it did so. Again the Machine quivered. But this time something delecate near the circlet—another spiraled wire—was flicked to a new position. The Machine jarred. Al reached toward the three switches but only had time to pull one. 


The story also appeared in this 1961 collection.   “The Other End of the Line”
by Walter Tevis
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1961

After accidentally telephoning himself two months in the future, George Bledsoe wonders what would happen if he doesn’t answer that call.

 Don’t argue, dammit. I ’m talking to you from October ninth. I’m sitting in a boat, twenty-eight miles and two months from where you are and I’ve got a pile of newspapers, Georgie, that haven’t even been printed yet, back there in August where you’re talking from. 




   “Brown Robert”
by Terry Carr
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul 1962

Arthur Leacock has his eye on his boss, young Robert Ernsohn, who has invented a time machine and is about to try it out on himself. Young professors, such as Robert, are not to be trusted with the young girls on campus.

I found the story to be quite a scary character sketch of Arthur, but was disapponted that the time travel aspect dealt with that worn-out aspect of the Earth moving away from the time traveler.

 The machine, the time machine, was ready for operation. It was clean and had been checked over for a week; all the parts which were doubtful had been replaced, and on a trial run yesterday it had performed perfectly. Robert’s sweater—obert’s, of course, not Arthur’s—had been sent two days into the future and had come back. It had been sent six months and then five years into the future, and it had still come back. But of course Arthur had never doubted that it would. 


   “Le notaire et la conspiration”
English title: “The Notary and the Conspiracy” (translated from French)
by Henri Damonti
First publication: Fiction, Sep 1962
Reprinted in: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1962

Mssr. Duplessis, a notary, joins a secret club that allows him to lead a parallel life in fifteenth century Florence, which with plagues and conspiracies against the prince turns out to be a more dangerous second life than he’d anticipated.

 I GUARANTEE UNUSUAL DIVERSIONS—NO ENTRANCE FEE—ONE TRIAL WILL CONVINCE YOU—APPLY NOW—BECOME A MEMBER OF OUR SOCIETY—DISCRETION ASSURED—ADDRESS BOX 322628 


   “The Unfortunate Mr. Morky”
by Vance Aandahl
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 1962

When Mr. Morky runs into the carny-man, the result is a plethora of funhouse mirrors, time travel, and a possible explanation for why people nowadays are so much alike.

For many years, Vance Aandahl was an English professor at nearby Metro State College in Denver, and among his students was another favorite Colorado writer, James Van Pelt.

 On the way, he met the other Mr. Morky, who was still struggling to get back, and there was a collision. He fused with himself. Unfortunately, it was an abnormal fusion, quite cancerous; all that custard pie started dividing and re-dividing and re-re-dividing into an infinite multiple division. 


   “Myths My Great-Granddaughter Taught Me”
by Fritz Leiber
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1963

A grandpa living in the Cold War era receives a visit from his great-granddaughter who wants to know details about Norse mythology.

 “That's right,” she told me, nodding. “Khrushchev was the giant Skymir, I’m pretty sure. Jotunheim and Asgard are Russia and America, all set to shoot missles at each other across England and Europe, which must be Midgard, of course—though sometimes I think the English are the Vanir.” 


   “The Nature of the Place”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb 1963

Paul Dearborn is quite certain that he’ll go to hell, a prospect that bothers him in only one way: the uncertainty of what it will be.

And the only thing that bothers me is that I just had to read this in the month of my own sixtieth birthday. Oh, that no-goodnick Silverberg!

 He thought back over his sixty years. The betrayals, the disappointments, the sins, the hangovers. He had some money now, and by some standards he was a successful man. But life hadn't been any joyride. It had been rocky and fear-torn, filled with doubts and headaches, moments of complete despair, others of frustrated pain. 


   “The Histronaut”
by Paul Seabury
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1963

Political scientist Paul Seabury, an expert on U.S. foreign policy during the cold war, wrote just one sf story speculating on how a cadre of time travelers, one of whom is assigned to Vladimir Lenin, might become the next weapon of choice for the war-prevention strategy of mutually assured destruction.

Janet and I spent an enjoyable Saturday morning tracking down this single extant photo of Professor Seabury.

 As Professor Schlesinger pointed out, some Soviet historians doubtless were already preparing the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Florida in 1933—so that the “historically necessary” contradictions of capitalism would emerge in the administration of President John Nance Garner. 


   “Now Wakes the Sea”
by J.G. Ballard
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1963

At night, Richard Mason hears an ancient sea outside his house, a sea that has not existed for a thousand, thousand years; eventually, he is drawn to it.

 Off-shore, the deeper swells of the open sea surged across the roofs of the submerged houses, the white-caps cleft by the spurs of isolated chimnies. 




   The Tree of Time
aka Beyond the Barrier
by Damon Knight
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1963—Jan 1964

Professor Gordon Naismith unexpectedly discovers that he’s a warrior Shefth from the future, and now the Uglies from the future wants him to return to kill an alien Zug who managed to get through the time barrier that’s meant to keep out the Zugs.

The full version, called Beyond the Barrier, was published shortly after the shortened two-part serial (about 45,000 words) appeared in F&SF.

 Let us say there was a need to be inconspicuous. This is a dead period, for hundreds of years on either side. No one knows about this abandoned liner except us, and no one would think of looking here. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Green Magic” by Jack Vance, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1963 [differing time rates ]

  Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein, F&SF, Jul–Sep 1963 [parallel universes ]

   “The Second Philadelphia Experiment”
by Robert F. Young
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul 1964

No, the first Philadelphia experiment wasn’t the one you’re thinking of. Instead, it was Ben Franklin’s first kite-flying escapade. Bet you didn't know he had a second kite that produced a message that Franklin struggled to interpret.

 —to the Dick the Disk Show, brought to you by W-D-U. 


   “A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Massachusetts”
by Wilma Shore
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1964

After Dr. Edwin Gerber’s death, a tape recording surfaces that purportedly has him interviewing a man from the year 2061.

 Q. How does it feel to go back a hundred— 


   “Famous First Words”
by Harry Harrison
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1965

For the most part, this story is about a cantankerous inventor who merely listens in on past historical events—which, of course does not qualify as time travel. But there is that for-the-most-part part.

 Thor, will you please take care of . . . 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Of Time and the Yan” by Roger Zelazny, F&SF, Jun 1965 [despite title, no time travel ]

   “Backtracked”
by Burt K. Filer
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1968

At forty-something, Fletcher sends his current well-honed body back ten years where his out-of-shape thirty-something mind and his thirty-something wife must now accept it without really knowing why the transfer was done.

 Maybe he should call Time Central? No, they were duty bound to give him no help at all. They’d just say that at some point ten years in the future he had gone to them with a request to be backtracked to the present—and that before making the hop his mind had been run through that clear/reset wringer of theirs. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Time of His Life” by Larry Eisenberg, F&SF, Apr 1968 [bizarre physiological aging ]



   “12:01 P.M.”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep 1973

Myron Castleman is reliving 59 minutes of one day over and over for eternity.

 And Myron Castleman would be permitted to lie forever, piling up experiences and memories, but each of only an hour’s duration, each resumed at 12:01 PM on this balmy spring day in Manhattan, standing outside near the Grand Central Tower. 








   The Chronopath Stories
by Steven Utley
First story: Galaxy, Jan 1976

I’ve read only the first of this series of stories which predates Utley’s better known Silurian tales. The first-person narrator, Bruce Holt, tells of his power (which he didn’t ask for and has no control over) of traveling through time and being deposited in other beings’ minds for a brief few seconds at a time.
  1. Getting Away (Jan 1976) Galaxy
  2. Predators (Oct 1976) The Ideas of Tomorrow
  3. To 1966 (Spring 1977) Chacal
  4. Spectator Sport (Jul 1977) Amazing
  5. The Maw (Jul 1977) F&SF
  6. Time and Hagakure (Winter 1977) Asimov’s
  7. Where or When (Jan 1991) Asimov’s
  8. The Glowing Cloud (Jan 1992) Asimov’s
  9. Now That We Have Each Other (Jul 1992)   Asimov’s
  10. One Kansas Night (Jun 1994) Asimov’s
  11. Living It (Aug 1994) Asimov’s
  12. Staying in Storyville (Dec 2006) in When or Where
  13. Life’s Work (Dec 2006) in When or Where
  14. The Here and Now (Mar 1998) Asimov’s

 What do you want me to do? Go back and find out where Captain Kidd buried his loot? 

—“Getting Away”


   “Balsamo’s Mirror”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1976

MIT student W. Wilson Newbury has a creepy Lovecraftian friend who is enamored with the 18th century, so naturally they visit an Armenian gypsy who makes them passengers in the bodies of an 18th century pauper and his father.

This story gave me a game that I play of pretending that I have just arrived as a passenger in my own body with no control over my actions or observations. How long does it take to figure out who and where I am? So, I enjoyed that aspect of the story, but I have trouble reading phonetically spelled dialects.

In his autobiography, de Camp says he based the setting of the story on his time as a graduate student at MIT in 1932, when Lovecraft (whom de Camp didn’t know) lived in nearby Providence: “I put H.P. Lovecraft himself, unnamed, into the story and stressed the contrast between his idealized eighteenth-century England and what he would have found if he had actually been translated back there. To get the dialect right, I read Fielding’s Tom Jones.”

 I didn’t say that we could or should go back to pre-industrial technology. The changes since then were inevitable and irreversible. I only said . . . 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “I See You” by Damon Knight, F↦SF, Nov 1976 [viewing the past ]

   “The Humanic Complex”
by Ray Russell
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1978

An amnesiac receives a visit from a tiny creature from the future who offers to grant him any three wishes he wants, but somehow the wishes keep being deflected in a theological direction.

 This may sound pompous, but . . . I wish to know whether or not there is a God. 


   “Palely Loitering”
by Christopher Priest
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1979

At age ten, Mykle jumps off the time-flux bridge at a sharp angle and goes far into the future where he sees a lovely girl named Estyll, and as he grows older, he is drawn to the future and to her over and over again.

 One of these traversed the Channel at an angle of exactly ninety degrees, and to walk across it was no different from crossing any bridge across any ordinary river.
One bridge was built slightly obtuse of the right-angle, and to cross it was to climb the temporal gradient of the flux-field; when one emerged on the other side of the Channel, twenty-four hours had elapsed.
The third bridge was built slightly acute of the right-angle, and to cross to the other side was to walk twenty-four hours into the past. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow existed on the far side of the Flux Channel, and one could walk at will among them. 




   “Loob”
by Bob Leman
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1979

Tom Perman remembers his home town differently, but in his actual life, the town is run-down and neither his grandmother nor her elegant house exist—a situation Tom can explain only through changes made to the past by loob, the town idiot; although ironically, it’s only through those changes that Loob himself even exists.

 Their only dreams are of winning prizes on television giveaway shows. 


   “Closing the Timelid”
by Orson Scott Card
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1979

Centuries in the future, Orion throws an illicit party in which the partygoers get to experience complete death in the past.

 Ah, agony in a tearing that made him feel, for the first time, every particle of his body as it screamed in pain. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Pusher” by John Varley, F&SF, Oct 1981 [time dilation ]

   “Valhalla”
by Gregory Benford
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1982

A nameless traveler from the future appears in Hitler’s bunker moments before the Führer’s suicide. Hitler interprets the man as a Valkyrie, come to escort him to a higher place, but the man (who is made up to look exactly like Hitler) has plans that don’t exactly include a Nordic heaven in Hitler’s future.

 Immortality, Führer! That is what I offer. I have come to you from the future! 


   “Coming Back”
by Damien Broderick
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1982

Physics-lab flunkie Eddie Rostow knows that the glory that his professor is claiming over localized time-reversal should rightly be Eddie’s own; and then, there’s Jennifer who let him have his way with her one night and now ignores him. So what, forsooth, will he do when the time contraption throws him into a 34-minute time loop?

 I’m not trapped. I thought I was a prisoner, but I’m the first man in history to be genuinely liberated. Set free from consequence. Do it. If you don’t like the results, scrub it on the next cycle and try again. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Boy Who Waterskied to Forever” by James Tiptree, Jr., F&SF, Oct 1982 [no definite time travel ]


No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Beyond the Dead Reef” by James Tiptree, Jr., F&SF, Jan 1983 [no definite time travel ]



   The Silurian Tales
by Steven Utley
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nov 1993

I’ve read ten of Utley’s stories of an expedition plopped into the Silurian geologic period, the most recent of which, “The End in Eden,” tells the tale of customs agents Phil Morrow and Sal Shelton, living at the border between the Silurian period and the present, matching wits with NCIS and JAG officers over a case of possible smuggling of Paleolithic biological specimens.
  1. There and Then (Nov 1993) Asimov’s
  2. The Age of Mud and Slime (Mar 1996) Asimov’s
  3. A Silurian Tale (May 1996) Asimov’s
  4. The Wind Over the World (Oct/Nov 1996) Asimov’s
  5. The Real World (30 Aug 2000) Sci Fiction
  6. Chain of Life (Oct/Nov 2000) Asimov’s
  7. The Despoblado (22 Nov 2000) Sci Fiction
  8. Cloud by Van Gogh (Dec 2000) F&SF
  9. Half a Loaf (Jan 2001) Asimov’s
  10. Five Miles from Pavement (21 Mar 2001) Sci Fiction
  11. The World Without (Jul 2001) Asimov’s
  12. Walking in Circles (Jan 2002) Asimov’s
  13. Treading the Maze (Feb 2002) Asimov’s
  14. Foodstuff (Feb 2002) F&SF
  15. Beyond the Sea (29 Aug 2002) Revolution SF
  16. Exile (Aug 2003) Asimov’s
  17. Chaos and Gods (18 Aug 2003) Revolution SF
  18. Invisible Kingdoms (Feb 2004) F&SF
  19. Babel (Mar 2004) Analog
  20. Another Continuum Heard From! (2 Apr 2004)   Revolution SF
  21. A Paleozoic Palimpsest (Oct 2004) F&SF
  22. The Wave-Function Collapse (Mar 2005) Asimov’s
  23. Promised Land (Jul 2005) F&SF
  24. Silv’ry Moon (Oct/Nov 2005) F&SF
  25. Diluvium (May 2006) F&SF
  26. All of Creation (18 Jan 2008) Cosmos
  27. The World Within the World (Mar 2008) Asimov’s
  28. The 400-Million-Year Itch (Apr 2008) F&SF
  29. Variant (Summer 2008) Postscripts
  30. The Woman Under the World (Jul 2008) Asimov’s
  31. Slug Hell (Sep 2008) Asimov’s
  32. Lost Places of Earth (Jan 2009) in We Think, Therefore We Are
  33. The Tortoise Grows Elate (Mar/Apr 2012) F&SF
  34. The End in Eden (Oct 2012) Analog
  35. The Gift Horse (Fall 2012) in The 400-Million-Year Itch
  36. Sidestep (Spring 2013) in Invisible Kingdoms

 Where’s he going to run to? Home is four hundred million miles away. 

—The End in Eden






   Files of the Time Rangers
by Richard Bowes
First story: Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Mar 1997

I’ve read several of the Time Rangers’ stories, including “Straight to My Lover”s Heart’, in which a ranger named Raz (aka Cupid) takes two time-traveling children under his wings—not literal wings, although they could well have been, given the stories’ backdrop of ancient meddling gods.
  1. In the House of the Man in the Moon (Mar 1997) in Bending the Landscape
  2. Diana in the Spring (Aug 1998) F&SF
  3. From the Files of the Time Rangers (6 Sep 2000) Sci Fiction
  4. Straight to My Lover’s Heart (Summer 2001) Black Gate
  5. The Quicksilver Kid (17 Jan 2001) Sci Fiction
  6. The Ferryman’s Wife (May 2001 ) F&SF
  7. Days Red and Green (14 Nov 2001) Sci Fiction
  8. The Mask of the Rex (May 2002) F&SF
  9. Godfather Death (23 Oct 2002) Sci Fiction
  10. From the Files of the Time Rangers (2005) fix-up novel

 Raz’s specialty is outcasts of Time. Runaways. Fugitives. Ones who can’t go home on holidays, because home hasn’t been built yet. Or it’s a place that's long gone or never was. 


   “Quid pro Quo”
by Ray Bradbury
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 2000

An author, frustrated by the wasted talent of Simon Cross, builds a time machine to bring the wasted Cross back to meet the promising young Cross.

 You do not build a time machine unless you know where you are going. 




   “Other People”
by Neil Gaiman
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2001

The demon of this story carries out an exquisite torture of his victim. At the end, we do discover the victim’s fate, though I wondered what became of the demon. Time travel? I haven’t heard Gaiman talk of this story, but I like to think of it in that way because of the opening and closing quotes.

 “Time is fluid here,” he told the new arrival. 


   “Tachycardia”
by Paul Park
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2002

A retired widower travels back to his son’s death during an operation in which his heart is momentarily stopped.

 “Geoffrey,” I tried to say. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring through the bars of his cage, his arms as thin as the sticks of bamboo, as they had been toward the end. 


   “Ransom”
by Albert E. Cowdrey
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 2002

Maks Hamilton, time-travel agent who lives centuries after the troubled times, must travel back to just before the disasters to kidnap a boy.

Albert E. Cowdrey is another of my favorite turn-of-the-millennium short story writers.

 I’ve got a sense of justice. It amused me to kidnap the son of the man who kidnapped me. 




   “When Bertie Met Mary”
by John Morressy
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 2002

A time traveler seeks Dr. Frankenstein.

 The time traveler—for so I must call him—emerged from his laboratory with a small wooden box cradled in his hands. 


   “Walk to the Full Moon”
by Sean McMullen
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 2002

Undergraduate linguist Carlos helps his uncle try to understand a pre-neanderthal girl who has appeared in present-day Spain.

 On a monitor screen was a girl in a walled garden. Crouching in a corner, she had a fearful, hunted look about her. I could see that she wore a blanket, that her skin was olive-brown, and that her features were bold and heavy. Oddly enough, it took a while for me to notice the most remarkable about her: she had no forehead! 


   “Train of Events”
by James L. Cambias
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2003

Jeremy Calder has been told by time travelers that he will cause the release of a deadly virus. No one is allowed to stop him—for he hasn’t done anything yet—and he seems to accept his fate without believing that he can change future history.

 Since the history books all agreed that he was going to kill six hundred people on June 25, 2038, Jeremy Calder was careful to get up early that day. 


   “The Only-Known
Jump Across Time”
by Eugene Mirabelli
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep 2003

In the 1920s, Lydia Chase and her father’s tailor fall in love and jump across time.

 The only known jump across time produced by an apparatus, a so-called time machine, took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May of 1928. 




   “Inside Time”
by Tim Sullivan
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 2009

On returning from the future via the Arrowhead mechanism that he invented, Herel Jablov finds himself trapped in a small station between universes along with a pretty woman named Mae and a criminal named Conway.

 This is going to sound odd to you, Herel, but the reason for the blank spot in your memory is that you’ve just come from the future. 


   “The Window of Time”
by Richard Matheson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 2010

Eighty-two-year-old Rich Swanson, “Swanee,” knows that he’s a burden living with his daughter, so he decides to rent a room on his own, but instead finds himself 68 years in his past, but still at age 82 and uncertain about why or what he can do in the years of his childhood.

 Of course! How had I missed it? If there was any reasonable point to all this . . . 




   “12:02 P.M.”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2011

Maybe eternity isn’t as long as Myron Kastleman had feared.

 The same hour keeps happening over and over again. Only it isn’t an hour. Not really. It seems to be getting shorter. 


   “The Man Who Murdered Mozart”
by Robert Walton and Barry N. Malzberg
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 2012

In the late 21st century, frustrated violin player Howard Beasley and his six friends make a plan to kidnap Mozart from his death bed, so that Beasley can get him to finish his Requiem and thereby ride the crest of the ensuing admiration to becoming the head of the world.

 That question is beyond me. Try asking Mozart. 




   “12:03 P.M.”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep 2012

After the events of “12:02 P.M.,” Myron Castleman finds that he can jump back to different times, not just 12:01 P.M., and that he can make small changes that have big consequences—although it’s still nearly impossible to get anyone to believe his story, except, perhaps, for Dolores.

 The man in the dark suit has become the most talked-about mystery man in the world. Who is he? Where did he come from? He appeared and unquestionably saved the life of one President but inadvertently—we presume inadvertently—caused the death of another. 


   The Change Storm Stories
by Rand B. Lee
First story: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/Jun 2013

For some reason, the world has splintered into a multitude of pockets from different times and different timelines. Who ya gonna call? Whitsun: pocketbuster.
  1. “Changes” F&SF, May/Jun 2013
  2. “The Judging” F&SF, Nov/Dec 2014

 But nobody had any explanations to proffer concerning why the Storm had splintered the world into probability-zones, replacing slices of the known, familiar present with slices of past, future, or alternative presents more or less probable. 

—from “Changes”


   “Affirmative Auction”
by James Morrow
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 2013

A Plutonian captain in the Pangalactic Virtue Patrol brings his time-traveling spaceship to a South Carolina slave auction in 1801 for a muddled morality lesson.

 . . . we have journeyed here from our mutual sun’s ninth body to rectify an anomaly that for over two centuries has corrupted your civilization. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Doing Emily” by Joe Haldeman, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 2013 [virtual reality ]



   “The Uncertain Past”
by Ted White
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 2014

JFK-viewers are clichéd in time travel, but Ted White—a favorite of mine from his time as Amazing and Fantastic editor—has a new twist as every observer sees a different version of the assasination attempt.

 Kennedy wasn’t hit. Neither was Connally. I didn’t bother sticking around after that. 




   “Presidential Cryptotrivia”
by Oliver Buckram
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/June 2014

A list of amazing but true facts about U.S. presidents, some of who traveled through time.

 . . . he traveled back in time to 1898 in order to engineer the unlikely annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii into the United States. 


   “Embrace of the Planets”
by Brenda Carre
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 2014

For a long time, maybe the entire ten years since that horrific accident, Eleanora Watson has been hoping that the strange little shop calle Trove would be open some day, and now it is. Inside, she finds the even stranger owner and a lost book by Jules Verne (who pointedly never wrote of time travel).

 Ah, yes. Embrace of the Planets. As far as I know it’s the only copy of Verne’s theories of the universe ever printed. 


   “The Bomb-Thing”
by K.J. Kabza
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2014

Blaine’s high school buddy Mason wants to get into the pants of a visiting hottie from Cal Tech, so naturally Blaine and Mason help her break into the physics lab at the local university where the bomb-thing they find takes them back to the sixties.

 Phyllis pointed at something on a table. It looked, no joke, like a bomb: kinda half-finished, with wires and plugs everywhere, and blinking lights and a countdown clock that said 03 10:11 02 05 1968. 


   “I’ll Follow the Sun”
by Paul Di Filippo
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2014

A Paul Di Filippo time travel story imbued with Steve Ditko and Robert Heinlein seems like it should be right up my alley, but I was sadly disappointed by the lack of time travel complications as college math student Dan Wishcup travels from his home time (and mine) of 1964 back to 1914 and forward to 2014.

 Dan expected some weighty math tomes, but the books disclosed themselves as a Signet paperback and a larger one from City Lights Press. The pamphlet proved to be a comic book! Specifically, Strange Tales No. 126, just out last month. 


   “History’s Best Places to Kiss”
by Nik Houser
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2015

Rather than continue with a messy divorce, Ray Fox and Karen Jameson-Pfiffer-Browning go back in time to prevent themselves from ever marrying each other.

 A word of advice: never read Philip K. Dick before going on vacation through time. 


The Archduke Ferdinand and his wife the Archduchess shortly before their assasination that sparked the Great War   “A Small Diversion on
the Road to Hell”
by Jonathan L. Howard
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 2015

A time traveler comes to the Helix bar where he’s flabbergasted to discover that the Great War on Earth from nineteen fourteen to eighteen was still started in exactly the same manner as before his trip in time. And that’s not the only chrono-intervention gone awry.

 He looks at me, looks at my look, looks at his bag, opens his bag, looks in his bag, takes out a gun. He does not look as if he is about to use it. Instead, he breaks it open. “Look!” he says, and I am looking already. “It hasn’t been fired! How can Princip have laid his hands on another gun so quickly? The car went by thirty seconds after I stole this from his pocket. He didn’t have time! How is it possible? 


Castoroides Knight by Charles Robert Knight (i.e., the image that fsf should have used to illustrate the story!)

   “Trapping the Pleistocene”
by James Sarafin
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/Jun 2015

Jack Morgan and his wife, whose ten-year-old daughter recently fell through the winter ice and drowned, are two of the rare beings who live in an agrarian enclave in the new Ohio wilderness, tending their livestock and working with tools rather than living in the anthill-like sterile towers full of webbed-together people. But now the towers need Jack’s help in rescuing a friend in the Pleistocene and track down a specimen of Castoroides ohioensis along the way.

 Okay. But to get to the point, Castoroides ohioensis was a giant species of beaver that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. It’s been extinct for at least ten thousand years. Our project requires sending an animal-capture expert to the late Pleistocene to catch an ohioensis and bring back tissue samples. 


   “A Turkey with Egg on His Face”
by Rob Chilson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/Jun 2015

Shy Georgie Plunkett of St. Clair County, Missouri, has a crush on Chloey Carew—but just how could he possibly compete with brash, outgoing, egotistical Harry Markesan for her attentions? Eenie meanie, time machinie.

 Not entirely true. Georgie had traveled, two-three times to Kansas City. Hadn’t liked it much: fair enough. It hadn’t liked him, either. Been to Joplin a couple times to visit a sister; to Fort Scott once, to have a special piece of metal crafted for his time machine. That was it. 




   “Tomorrow Is a Lovely Day”
by Lisa Mason
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2015

Benjamin, having a really bad day working at his seemingly pointless job watching a machine that supposedly retrieves information from the future, gets a feeling that he and the machine’s inventor have been through all this before.

 I substituted phase-compensating lenses to dispel the zero average of the cosine function mandated by Eberhard’s proof. I instituted an autocidal-prevention mechanism to avoid the self-canceling paradox. Kill my own grandfather? Father a child who will bear a child who will kill me? What nonsense. My calcite crystals generate superluminal tachyons. Information from the future! The Nostradamus Machine! 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “A User’s Guide to Increments of Time” by Kat Howard, F&SF, Mar/Apr 2015 [differing time rates ]

  “Dixon’s Road” by Rucgard Chwedyk, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 2015 [long sleep ]

  “It’s All Relative at the Space-Time Café” by Norman Birnbach, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2015 [despite title, no time travel ]

   “Robot from the Future”
by Terry Bisson
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2016

Eleven-year-old Theodore, his enhanced dog Bette, and his Grandpa deal with a robot who’s traveled from a post-singularity future and needs a Mason jar of gas-o-line to get back home without endangering the Time line.

 “There is no Time machine,” it says. “We are not supposed to be here but our Time line pinched and we are in big trouble unless you can help.” 


   “Vishnu Summer”
by David Prill
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 2016

Audrey lost one arm in a farm accident as a child; so now, as a young adult, she becomes fascinated when a three-armed man from the next county over is put on trial for murder.

And my interpretation is that the ending involves a brief bit of time travel, back to an alternate world that has returned to the start of Three-Arm’s trial.

 I felt like something was being stripped away from me. From inside. Like something was being unwound. I don’t know it that’s the right way to explain it. I couldn’t explain it. It was just one of those feelings without a name. 


 

102 items are in the time-travel list for these search settings.
Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (main@colorado.edu)